Two kitchen staples, handed over at a door. It's the least expensive gift on this site's whole list of customs and the only one with a documented history behind it.
The House Illustration From £19.99 One photograph of the front of the house, restyled into an illustration. The watermarked preview is free.
From £19.99 · Poster
See this printSee all sizes and pricesWhere it is from
Not Britain, and not originally a housewarming at all. Bread and salt are "offered to guests in a ceremony of welcome in cultures around the world", and the pairing is "particularly significant in Slavic countries, but is also notable in Baltic, non-Slavic Balkan, and Middle Eastern cultures". In the Slavic form the bread carries hospitality and everyday sustenance, and the salt carries long friendship.
Germany has its own version. The same Wikipedia article lists Germany separately and says bread and salt are given there "to move into a house to wish prosperity and fertility", and also as a wedding gift.
How people do it
There's no correct version, which is worth saying because a lot of writing on this pretends otherwise. Some people present a loaf and a small dish of salt together on a plate at the door. Some wrap them separately. Some add a candle for light or a bottle for cheer. If you want a line to say while handing it over, "so the house is never hungry and life never lacks flavour" is a phrasing sometimes attached to it in English, and it is a good sentence regardless of its provenance.
Being straight about the source
Our source for both paragraphs under "Where it is from" is Wikipedia's article on bread and salt. That's not a primary source and we are not going to dress it up as one. We looked on 3 September 2026 for a museum, a national library, a folklore society or an encyclopaedia entry documenting the custom, and found none we could reach. If you are quoting this at a wedding speech, quote it as folk custom rather than as scholarship.
This sits inside the housewarming, one level below housewarming traditions, which covers the plant, the broom and the toast alongside it. If you would rather the gift outlived the loaf, a housewarming gift showing the actual house sits happily beside the bread and the salt rather than replacing them, and the card is where the wish gets written down.
Quoted from Wikipedia, read 3 September 2026 (the German paragraph re-read 1 October 2026), and named as a non-primary source on purpose: no museum, national library, folklore society or encyclopaedia entry documenting this custom was reachable on that date.